by Solomon, Barbara H. (EDT); Rampone, W. Reginald, Jr. (EDT)
When AIDS finally reached Highfield and Zengeza, and started claiming lives in the streets where we lived, that triggered the alarm bells inside our heads. AIDS had finally knocked on our doors.
For two months, we had watched George waste away at Harare Hospital. In desperation, his father—just like the rest of us—skeptical of the healing properties of modern medicine, had turned to traditional healers. Somehow, we just could not watch him die. We made futile journeys to all corners of the country while George wasted away. He finally died on our way home from some traditional healer in Mutare.
All the way from Harare to Wedza, the atmosphere was limp. January’s scorching sun in the naked sky and the suffocating air intensified into a sense of looming crisis that could not be expressed in words. The rains were already very late and the frequent sight of untilled fields, helplessly confronting an unfulfilling sky, created images of seasons that could no longer be understood. The crops that had been planted with the first and only rains of the season had emerged only to fight a relentless war with the sun. Most had wilted and died. The few plants that still survived were struggling in the stifling heat.
Now, as we stood forlornly round the grave, the choir sang an ominous song about death: we named the prophets yielded up to heaven while the refrain repeated: “Can you see your name? Where is your name?”
This eerie question rang again and again in our minds until it became part of one’s soul, exposing it to the nakedness of the Mutekedza communal land: land that was overcrowded, old, and tired. Interminable rows of huts stretched into the horizon, along winding roads that only seemed to lead to other funerals.
Not far away, a tattered scarecrow from some forgotten season flapped a silent dirge beneath the burning sun.
Lean cattle, their bones sticking out, their ribs moving painfully under their taut skin, nibbled at something on the dry ground: what it was, no one could make out. And around the grave the atmosphere was subdued and silent. Even the once phenomenal Save River, only a stone’s throw away to the east, lay silent. This gigantic river, reduced to puddles between heaps of sand, seemed to be brooding on its sad predicament. And behind the dying river, Wedza Mountain stared at us with resignation, as if it, too, had given up trying to understand some of the strange things that were happening.
The preacher told the parable of the Ten Virgins. He warned that when the Lord unexpectedly came and knocked on our door, like the clever five virgins, we should be found ready and waiting to receive Him.
Everyone nodded silently.
George’s grandfather mourned the strange doings of this earth. He wished it was he who had been taken away. But then such were the weird ways of witches and wizards that they preferred to pluck the youngest and plumpest—although George had grown thinner than the cattle we could see around us. We listened helplessly as the old man talked and talked until at last he broke down and cried like a small child.
George’s father talked of an invisible enemy that had sneaked into our midst and threatened the very core of our existence. He warned us that we should change our ways immediately or die.
He never mentioned the word “Aids,” the acronym AIDS.
George’s wife was beyond all weeping. She talked of a need for moral strength during such critical times. She readily admitted that she did not know where such strength could come from: it could be from the people; it could be from those gone beyond; it could be from God. But wherever it was from, she needed it. As if acting upon some invisible signal, people began to cry. We were not weeping for the dead. We were weeping for the living. And behind us, while Wedza Mountain gazed at us dejectedly, the Save River was silently dying.
The coffin was slowly lowered into the grave and we filed past, throwing in clods of soil. In the casket lay George, reduced to skin and bone. (Most people had refused a last glimpse of him.) During his heyday we had called him Mr. Bigstuff because of his fast and flashy style—that was long ago.
As we trudged back to the village, away from the wretched burial area, most of us were trying to decide which memory of George to take back with us: Mr. Bigstuff or that thread, that bundle of skin and bones which had died on our way back from some traditional healer in Mutare.
Out there, around the fire, late that Monday evening, all discussion was imbued with a painful sense of futility, a menacing uncertainty, and an overwhelming feeling that we were going nowhere.
Drought.
“Compared to the ravaging drought of 1947, this is child’s play,” said George’s grandfather. “At that time, people survived on grass like cattle,” he concluded, looking skeptically up into the deep night sky.
No one helped him take the discussion further.
Politics.
The village chairman of the party attempted a spirited explanation of the advantages of the government’s economic reform program: “It means a general availability of goods and services and it means higher prices for the people’s agricultural produce,” he went on, looking up at the dark, cloudless sky. Then, with an inexplicable renewal of optimism peculiar to politicians, he went on to talk of programs and projects until, somehow, he, too, was overcome by the general weariness and took refuge in the silence around the dying fire.
“Aren’t these religious denominations that are daily sprouting up a sign that the end of the world is coming?” asked George’s grandfather.
“No, it’s just people out to make a quick buck, nothing else,” said George’s younger brother.
“Don’t you know that the end of the world is foretold in the Scriptures,” said the Methodist lay preacher with sharp urgency. He continued: “All these things”—he waved his arms in a large general movement—“are undoubtedly signs of the Second Coming.” Everyone looked down and sighed.
And then, inevitably, AIDS came up. It was a topic that everyone had been making a conscious effort to avoid, but then, like everything else, its turn came. Everyone referred to it in indirect terms: that animal, that phantom, that creature, that beast. It was not out of any respect for George. It was out of fear and despair.
“Whatever this scourge is”—George’s father chuckled—“it has claimed more lives than all my three years in the Imperial Army against Hitler.” He chuckled again helplessly.
“It seems as if these endless funerals have taken the place of farming.”
“They are lucky, the ones who are still getting decent burials,” chipped in someone from out of the dark. “Very soon, there will be no one to bury anybody.”
The last glowing ember in the collected heap of ashes grew dimmer and finally died away. George’s grandfather asked for an ox-hide drum and began playing it slowly at first and then with gathering ferocity. Something in me snapped.
Then he began to sing. The song told of an unfortunate woman’s repeated pregnancies which always ended in miscarriages. I felt trapped.
When at last the old man, my father, stood up and began to dance, stamping the dry earth with his worn-out car-tire sandals, I knew there was no escape. I edged George’s grandfather away from the drum and began a futile prayer on that moonless night. The throbbing resonance of the drum rose above our voices as we all became part of one great nothingness. Suddenly I was crying for the first time since George’s death. Tears ran from my eyes like rivers in a good season. During those years, most of us firmly believed that the mighty Save River would roll on forever, perhaps until the end of time.
But not now, not any longer.
FARIDA KARODIA
Farida Karodia was born in 1942 in the Eastern Cape province of South Africa. She taught in Johannesburg, Zambia, and Swaziland, but while she was teaching in Zambia in 1968, she learned that she had been exiled by the South African government and emigrated to Canada. In 1994, she was able to return to South Africa, and she currently divides her time between those two nations. In India, in 1993, she wrot
e and produced Midnight Embers, a half hour television drama that won awards at three international film festivals. Her novels include Daughters of the Twilight (1986) and Boundaries (2003). Coming Home (1988), A Shattering of Silence (1993), Against an African Sky (1997) and Other Secrets (2011) are collections of short stories.
Cardboard Mansions
(1988)
“Chotoo! Eh Chotoo!”
“Ja, Dadi-Ma?” the boy cried from the far side of the yard.
“Don’t ja Dadi-Ma me! Come here!” the old woman called from the stoep. Leaning over the low abutment wall, she craned to peer around the corner but her view was obstructed by a pile of rubbish. She stepped back, knocking over the chipped enamel pail which was normally kept beside her bed at night. The empty pail rolled out of reach, clattering against the wall.
She waited for the boy, pulling the end of the faded green cotton sari over her head. Her wide, flat heels hung over the back of the blue rubber thongs almost two sizes smaller than her feet.
Dadi-Ma looked much older than her seventy-three years. She was a tall, heavily built woman with slow, tired movements. Her dark brown eyes were set deep in a face scored and marked with age and hardship. The gap in the front of her mouth was relieved only by three stumps of rotted teeth, bloodily stained by betel-nut.
In her youth she had been much admired for her beauty, with her dark lustrous eyes like those of a young doe. But there was no one left to remember her as she’d been then. Sonny, the youngest of her sons, and her grandson, Chotoo, were the only surviving members of her family. Three of her sons and her husband, like so many of the men who had toiled in the sugarcane fields, had all died of tuberculosis.
And now the only ones left to her were her grandchild, Chotoo, and her friend Ratnadevi. Dadi-Ma in her old age was left to gaze upon the world with the patient endurance of the old water buffalo they had once owned in India.
The boy, Chotoo, took a long time coming. His grandmother waited, her broad, varicose-veined feet and legs planted astride. A rip in her sari revealed a discoloured slip, unadorned and frayed. Her dark eyes stared out from under thick brows, slowly gathering in impatience.
“Chotoo!” she called again and sat down on the step to wait.
* * *
The row of shanties was all connected. At one time they had served as a shed, but an enterprising landlord had used sheets of corrugated iron to divide the shed into stalls which he rented to the poor. All the dividing walls stopped at least twelve inches short of the ceiling.
On Saturday night when Frank Chetty beat his wife, Nirmala, her cries swirled over the heads of the other tenants. Some ignored them. Others were just grateful that they were not in Nirmala’s shoes. Dadi-Ma’s daughter-in-law, Neela, had once remarked to their neighbour, Urmila, that no matter what Sonny was guilty of, this was one thing that he had not yet stooped to.
“Just you wait and see,” Urmila said. “It’ll happen when Sonny loses his job.”
But even when Sonny lost his job he never raised a hand to his wife. Chotoo, however, was not so lucky and in his short life had been slapped many times, often for no apparent reason. Despite this, Dadi-Ma’s pride in her son remained undiminished. She could hold up her head and say that he had never lifted a hand to his wife or his mother.
It had come as a terrible blow to Dadi-Ma when Neela had died in childbirth three years ago, leaving Sonny with the boy, Chotoo. But Sonny was hardly ever around and everything had fallen on her shoulders. Somehow they managed. Even when Sonny lost his job they still managed. Dadi-Ma used many of the ideas she had picked up from Ratnadevi who had a real knack for making do.
But eventually Sonny had fallen in with a bad crowd and everything seemed to come apart. Now there was a new element in their struggle, one that caused Dadi-Ma a great deal of anxiety. As Sonny was jobless, there was not a penny coming in any more, yet all weekend long Sonny smoked dagga. Sometimes he drew the reefers through a broken bottleneck making himself so crazy that he’d end up running amok with a knife. At times like these Dadi-Ma and Chotoo had to hide from him until the effects of the dagga wore off.
Without means to pay the rent there was constant friction between himself and the landlord. Sonny, desperate and irritable, pleaded with the landlord until they reached a state of open hostility. The tenants were all drawn into this conflict, all except Dadi-Ma. She alone remained aloof and detached. Sitting on the concrete step in front of their room, she listened in silence to the two men arguing when the landlord came to collect the rent. Sonny’s response was always wild and abusive. Although she was afraid that he would harm the landlord, she remained impassive.
The landlord, Mr. Naidoo, grew to resent the old woman. He thought that her silence was a way of showing contempt for him. Who was she to judge him, a man of means and property? He often wondered as he drove off in his Mercedes why it was that she never said anything. What thoughts crossed her mind as she sat there, implacable as a stone Buddha? In the end he grew to hate the old woman.
Then one day the inevitable happened: Sonny got into a drunken brawl and stabbed someone. He was arrested, sentenced and thrown into jail. Mr. Naidoo saw his opportunity to evict the old woman, but he hesitated, fearing censure from the other tenants, some of whom had contributed to help Dadi-Ma with her rent. He knew, though, that this situation could not continue indefinitely. Those who had supported her were themselves experiencing difficulty. So he bided his time.
It happened that a few months later the old woman fell so far behind with her rent that the others could no longer assist her. Now at last Mr. Naidoo could exercise his rights; he gave Dadi-Ma her notice.
She was devastated. She had tried so hard to keep the roof over their heads. There was nothing for her to do now but pack their few possessions. They would have to move, but where to? she fretted. Dadi-Ma’s concern was more for her grandson than for herself. She did not have many more years left, but what would happen to this boy who was only starting out in life?
* * *
“What took you so long, hey?” Dadi-Ma demanded, feigning severity when the boy finally joined her.
He shrugged, his hands thrust deep in his pockets, emulating the cockiness of the older boys who hung out in the alley. She tousled his hair and he sat down on the step beside her, pressing close to her side where he felt safe and secure.
For a time they sat like this in silence, the boy content with this closeness while his grandmother brooded about the past and the problems which were driving them into the unknown. Her mind moved slowly and ponderously, like an ox picking its way over the stones, lingering on the good times.
Lately her thoughts had started returning to those happy years—to Ratnadevi and Stanger. The two women had shared a friendship that went back a long way. They had arrived on the same boat from India to marry two indentured labourers on the sugarcane fields in Natal. They had lived in the same compound, as close as sisters, sharing in each other’s joys and tragedies.
“Why you like the skollies?” the old woman asked the boy, adjusting the sari over her head. “They no good.”
“Why you say that, Dadi-Ma?” he asked. His enormous brown eyes turned up to her questioningly.
He was so young, she thought, how could he understand that she wanted him to make something of his life? How could he understand that if he didn’t try, this was all he had to look forward to?
“Because they bad. They smoke dagga. You best go to school so you can be something, hey?” she said in her broken English.
“We don’t do nothing wrong, Dadi-Ma, we just sit out there bullshitting.”
The old woman shook her head wearily.
“They say old man Naidoo going to throw us out. Where we going to go, Dadi-Ma?”
Dadi-Ma felt a deep attachment to her grandson. She had been drawn to him from the moment he was born. It had been Dadi-Ma who
took care of him right from that first day, not his mother who was too tired and sickly to care. From Chotoo came the only warmth and caring that life still apportioned to her. All that the boy had known of love and tenderness came from her; not from his mother, whom he could not remember. It was a bond that neither had words for. The only expression Dadi-Ma ever gave her grandson of her feelings was a rare and awkward pat on his cheek, or the tousling of his hair with her arthritic fingers.
The boy, undernourished and small for his age, with eyes as large and expressive as hers had once been, was conscious of his grandmother’s love. The others, like his parents, had deserted him. But not her. She was the fulcrum in his fragile existence.
“I was thinking, Chotoo, maybe you and me, we go to Stanger. It will be a good place for us. This place is no good,” she muttered.
“Where is Stanger, Dadi-Ma?” he asked, his voice catching in breathless excitement.
“It’s not so far away.”
“How will we go . . . by car, by train?” he asked, in his shrill little voice.
She nodded, smiling down at him. “We go by train.”
Dadi-Ma had saved some money for just such an emergency. The money, fifty rands, was what she had amassed in her long lifetime. Money that she had artfully secreted. Many times the money had gone for some other emergency but somehow she had always managed to replace it. Sometimes it had been slow to accumulate: money from the sale of a few pieces of gold jewellery brought with her from India, a few cents here and there from what she could scrimp out of the money Sonny had given her to buy food and clothes in the good old days when he still had a job.
